Don't Forget to Write

A Blessing and a Curse

Milo had crawled out of bed to sit at my feet and look up at me inquisitively. He could smell it. "Don't worry buddy, I brought you back something too." His tail started wagging. I pulled out a big dog treat from Abe's counter and his tail whipped back and forth. "Good boy. Sit down." He did. "Paw?" He put his paw in my hand. "Now lay down." He fell to the floor before I even finished the command. "That's a good boy Milo!" I gave him the treat and he scooped it up and carried it to his bed in the corner while Bruno and I ate our subs at the kitchen table.

"What's got you in a good mood?" Bruno asked through a mouthful of sandwich. I shrugged, taking a big bite of my grilled chicken sub. I hadn't eaten since breakfast this morning, and the sudden explosion of flavors, buffalo sauce, salt, pepper, oregano, ripe lettuce, juicy tomato, and chicken that was grilled and seasoned to perfection, all layered in crispy toasted Italian bread, gave me enough of a sensory overload that I had to close my eyes and chew to make sure I was tasting it all. I opened my eyes to Bruno smirking at me. "It's a girl, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"That girl from the bar? The one that's your professor or something?"

"She's not my professor, she's my T.A."

"You dog," he said.

I smiled and told him all about mine and Camila's rooftop adventure. He nodded, smiled, asked questions when he needed to, and at the end he said, "Peter, that sounds like the beginning of a love story."

"Except for the part where she said she couldn't be with me."

"Are you kidding? That is the part that makes it the most like a love story. Everybody is a sucker for forbidden romance."

I rolled my eyes, "I just got out of a serious relationship, I'm not really willing to put myself out there."

"You haven't really told me much about that relationship."

"What is there to tell? We dated, we loved each other, or at least what I thought was love, than after a while one of us didn't love the other anymore, and that person cheated. Now I'm here."

"Cheated with your best friend, no less."

"Yeah, thanks for reminding me."

"No problem buddy."

"Right."

After a bit of silence, Bruno said, "There's definitely more to it than that."

"There's more to everything. I could write a short story about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

"What?"

"What I'm saying is, you can add detail to anything, and turn it into a story. Sometimes it's better to skip the detailed bullshit and just tell the facts."

"Well I feel like you might be omitting some facts."

I shrugged, "poetic license."

"Very funny. Do you believe in love, Pete?"

"No, not really."

"Why not?"

"You mean that you do?"

"Of course."

I scrunched my eyebrows at him. "You? Bruno? The most cynical person I know? You believe in love?"

"Of course man!"

"Next you're going to tell me you believe in God."

"I do."

"What the hell Bruno? I thought you were an atheist?"

"More of an agnostic. See, I read somewhere in a book that believing in a higher power is a gamble. If it doesn't exist, than ultimately it doesn't matter whether you believed in the higher power or not. But if there is a higher power, and you've decided to live your life like a little asshole because you didn't really believe in higher powers, well then that's a losing bet. Sure, the afterlife might not exist, but if it does, then it won't be kind to you. If you choose to believe in a higher power, and lead a good life, either your afterlife will be fine, or it won't exist at all, and you'll never know, because your dead. But at least you will have lived a decent life."